Thursday, June 12, 2008

1.NASA:-warming is causing greenland to melt faster than expectedWarming air temperatures are causing Greenland's ice sheet to melt faster thanpreviously anticipated, reported NASA. Though unlikely, the complete melting ofGreenland's ice sheet would raise global sea level by 23 feet.Data gathered by a pair of NASA satellites orbiting Earth show Greenland continued to lose ice mass at a significant rate through April 2006, and that the rate of loss is accelerating, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.

2.Future Ice Age Put on the Back BurnerDr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton has published a report in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine laying out his research that future ice-ages -- an evolutionary imperative for the planet earth -- could be pushed back some half a million years.

3.Melting glaciers and ice cap will drive sea level riseMelting glaciers and ice caps will contribute more to global sea level rise this century than the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, reports a study published in the current issue of Science. Also mentioned about the the largest tropical glaciers-peru.Peru's largest glacier is melting rapidly and could complete disappear by 2012 says a glaciologist from Ohio State University. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco last week, Dr. Lonnie Thompson said that Peru's Qori Kalis glacier is melting at a rate of some 60 meters (200 feet) per year. Qori Kalis glacier is part of the Quelccaya Ice Cap, the largest body of ice in the tropics.

4.Glaciers in western China shrank 20% in 40 yearsGlaciers in Western China have melted at "alarming" rates over the past 40 years, according to Chinese state media.

5.Glaciers speed up due to global warmingAntarctic glaciers are moving faster due to global warming.Many researchers made their conclusions about the speeding up of the glaciers of the places like Africa & Switzerland and others.1-Africa's glaciers gone by 2025Fabled equatorial icecaps will disappear within two decades, because of global warming, a study British and Ugandan scientists has found. They report results from the first survey in a decade of glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains of East Africa. An increase in air temperature over the last four decades has contributed to a substantial reduction in glacial cover, they say.2-75% of Switzerland's glaciers gone by 2050,Europe heats upThe four hottest years on record were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Ten percent of Alpine glaciers disappeared during the summer of 2003 alone. At current rates, three quarters of Switzerland's glaciers will have melted by 2050. Europe has not seen climate changes on this scale for 5000 years, says a new report by the European Environment Agency. )

6.Greenpeace pressures China on global warmingGreenpeace stepped up the pressure onChina to do something about its surging greenhouse gas emissions, launching a campaign that warns melting glaciers could hurt Chinese agriculture and hydroelectric projects. The environmental group cited a Chinese Academy of Sciences' projection that 80 percent of the glaciers in Tibet and the surrounding region could melt by 2035, though other research suggests more moderate melting.

7.Why some Himalayan glacies aren't melting due to climate changeNew research into climate change in the Western Himalaya and the surrounding Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains could explain why many glaciers there are growing and not melting. The findings suggest this area, known as the Upper Indus Basin, could be reacting differently to global warming, the phenomenon blamed for causing glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal and India, to melt and shrink.

8.Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting find new studiesScientists have confirmed that climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, according to an article published in the Journal of Glaciology.